Japanese Patent Laid-Open No. 62-184856 (Japanese Patent No. 2594912) describes an ink cartridge and a recording apparatus in which the ink cartridge has a non-volatile memory in which data corresponding to the amount of remaining ink are stored in order to manage the amount of remaining ink for each cartridge.
Japanese Patent Laid-Open No. 8-197748 describes an ink jet printer including an ink cartridge having a non-volatile memory in which ID information is stored and a printer main body correlating the ID information for the ink cartridge read out from the non-volatile memory with the amount of remaining ink so as to eliminate the need to redetect the amount of remaining ink when an ink cartridge with the same ID information is reinstalled.
The above-described conventional recording apparatus and other devices are structured such that when an ink cartridge is installed at a predetermined position, a plurality of electrodes provided in the ink cartridge are electrically connected to a plurality of electrodes provided in an ink cartridge installing portion to allow a power supply to the non-volatile memory provided in the ink cartridge and transmission and reception of various signals to and from the non-volatile memory.
The conventional apparatus, however, is structured such that a power supply and various signal terminals of the non-volatile memory are all electrically drawn out and connected to a control portion of a printer apparatus main body, so that a large number of connection lines are present between the ink cartridge installed portion and the control portion of the printer apparatus main body. This may make it difficult to wire the connection lines. In particular, in a structure in which the ink cartridge is installed in a carriage including a recording head, a flexible cable must be used to electrically connect the carriage and the printer apparatus main body together so as to enable the movement of the carriage. As a result, an increase in the number of cores in the flexible cable may undesirably increase the amount of force required to move the carriage. Furthermore, if a plurality of ink cartridges are installed in the carriage, the number of connection lines increases in proportion to the number of ink cartridges. For example, in a structure using two types of ink cartridges including a black and a color ones, terminals of the non-volatile memory which are provided for the corresponding cartridges must each be drawn out, thereby doubling the number of required signal lines.
The present invention is provided to solve these problems, and it is an object thereof to provide an ink jet recording apparatus wherein a carriage in which an ink cartridge is installed has an interface circuit (memory access controlling circuit) comprising a function of accessing a non-volatile memory and a function of communicating data to and from a printer apparatus main body, thereby making it possible to reduce the number of connection lines between an ink cartridge installed portion and the printer apparatus main body, as well as a semiconductor device and a recording head device both serving to achieve this purpose.